


everything that you think you know

by galaxyowl



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (the twist is that it's the master there's not a second secret twist), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, F/M, but with a twist, human nature au, puts on my clown makeup and marks this as f/m
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:02:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22704400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxyowl/pseuds/galaxyowl
Summary: The man known as O has dreams, sometimes, about stars, and death, and fields of red grass.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 250





	1. fall

“No no no,” the Doctor says, staring at O. “I read your file. You’re a champion sprinter.”

“What?” O furrows his brow. “I… Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, I was. Don’t know why I said that, really. That that was when I was back in school, though. It’s been a while.”

The Doctor frowns. “Right,” she says slowly. “Fair enough. Sorry, not sure what I was even accusing you of there. Now—“ She glances between the four of them. “We’ve got some time here, while we wait for this plane to get wherever it’s going. We need to work out what we’re going to do about Barton.”

(The conversation moves on, but O can’t seem to stop thinking about it, how his knowledge of his own past feels like a story that doesn’t quite fit together. He can remember as easily as the Doctor did that he was a sprinter, but he can’t remember what it felt like to run like that, so easily. He tells himself it’s just the stress of the day getting to him.)

***

They are halfway across the ocean when the creatures show up—the same too-bright-to-look-at not-quite-humanoid beings that had been chasing them on and off throughout this whole escapade.

It’s Ryan who spots the first one as it passes through the wall, and then all of the humans are shouting and the Doctor is trying to ask it questions but she isn’t sure it can even hear her, and it reaches out an arm towards her and the whole room blurs away. The last thing she’s aware of before she’s thrown out of the universe is O, beside her, just near enough that when the creature reaches for her it touches him too.

And then she is meeting eyes with him as the two of them stand surrounded by a not-forest of _something_ , both still in their formalwear.

O looks around. “Where are we?”

“I’m not sure,” the Doctor says. “Those creatures must’ve transported us here, same as they did Yaz. Still working it out where exactly here is, though.” She scuffs the ground (is it ground?) with her shoe. “Sure everything’s going to be fine, though, just give me a moment here.” A flash of light shoots through one of the strange spiraling structures. “Oh! That’s interesting. Synapses? Are we inside something?”

***

O looks at the woman who’d helped them escape that other plane. “Ada Lovelace?” he says. “You’re saying that’s… _Ada Lovelace_ Ada Lovelace.”

“Seems like it!” The Doctor grins.

“I already told you,” Ada says, “that’s not my last name.”

“Yes, of course, sorry,” O says. To Ada Lovelace. Ada Not-Lovelace. The point remains.

He’s in 1834, with the Doctor and Ada Lovelace. He looks back at the Doctor. “I’ve dreamed about this, since I was a kid, you know,” he says with a laugh. “Time travel.” Pauses. “Sometimes literally.”

“How’s it measuring up so far?” the Doctor says.

“I mean, I've had better days,” O says. “But I’ve had worse ones too.”

The Doctor turns her attention back to Ada and Babbage. They talk a little while, and then the Doctor is messing with the machine—the Silver Lady, Babbage called it—and O is watching wordlessly, because really, what in the world is there to say? He trusts the Doctor to get them home, to defeat these aliens from another world. She’s the Doctor, after all. That’s what she does.

“Alright,” she says now, peering down at her sonic. “I’m going to activate it, and then we’ll have just a moment to step through together. Should get you home safe and sound, O.” She holds out a hand to him. “Together, yeah?”

He hesitates, a moment. Then he takes her offered hand. He tries not to think about the feeling that flutters into his chest at her touch.

She looks at him, and gives a tiny nod. Together, they stop forward into the brilliant white light of the creature’s form.

Just when he can barely make out their surroundings anymore, Ada lunges towards them, grabbing the Doctor’s other arm. The Doctor shouts—

And then he’s on the ground, staring up at a starlit night sky. The Doctor, beside him, is on her feet in an instant, her hand sliding out of his grasp as easily as water.

***

O and the Doctor are sitting at Noor Khan’s kitchen table.

They have been in 1943 for a couple hours or so. There is no sign that those creatures have pursued them here. Which means, of course, that there is no clear way for them to get home. He has already figured out that much.

On the other side of the small house, Noor and Ada talk quietly.

O absently thrums his fingers on the table (an even beat, _one two three four_ ). The Doctor’s gaze flicks towards his hand, a strange expression on her face. He stops.

“So, what’s the plan now?” he says.

“Well—“ she starts, but doesn’t take the sentence any further. A long moment passes. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t know. I’ve been trying to think of one, but…” She takes a breath. “I’m sorry, O.” Her eyes are strangely dull. “I am so, so sorry. I think we might be stranded here.”

He stares at her, across the table. The words that come out of his mouth are, “Do you really give up that easily?”

She blinks. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve heard so many stories about you, Doctor. I find it hard to believe—“

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

He presses on. “I find it hard to believe that the person I’ve read about would lose hope as easily as all that. You’re _the_ _Doctor_.” A note of desperation creeps into his voice without him meaning it to. He believes what he’s saying, but he also _has_ to believe what he’s saying. Otherwise…

She smiles. It doesn’t strike O as particularly genuine. “Thanks. I do appreciate it, I just… I hope your faith in me isn’t misplaced.” She pauses, as if considering her next sentence. “I don’t always save everyone, O. Some people don’t make it out alive to tell stories.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. It isn’t surprising, really, but it’s one thing to know something and another to hear it laid out like that. He sighs. “Then what do we do now?”

“Noor’s said we can stay with her for a couple of days, and then we should probably work out a way to get out fo Paris. After that…” She shrugs. “We live out our lives. I’ll make it back to the TARDIS if I just wait it out. Take the long way ‘round, yeah? But you…” She trails off.

Oh. Yeah. Okay.

He tries to picture it: living in the 1900s. The idea is terrifying, if he’s perfectly honest.

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor says again.

“Well—“ He flounders. “Let’s still not give up just yet, shall we? Maybe everything will look better in the morning.”

She smiles. For real, this time, soft and wonderful. “Who knows,” she says, “maybe it will.”

***

There is a moment where Yaz is certain she is going to die. The machine is spinning up, and she still doesn’t entirely understand Barton’s plan but she knows it’s nothing good. The Doctor is nowhere to be seen; there’s no one coming to save them. After everything, all the close calls and the running, this is the first time that she’s really believed it was going to happen. This might just be the end of Yasmin Khan, and the rest of the human race.

And then the machine stops.

In the silence that follows, Yaz barely dares to breathe.

“Is… is that it?” Ryan says.

Yaz takes a deep breath, steels herself, and approaches the thing. She taps the glass.

“Yaz!” Ryan hisses. “Don’t go messing with it.”

“I don’t understand,” Graham says. “Did it do something we can’t see?”

“I’m not sure,” Yaz says. She wishes, for the hundredth time today, that the Doctor were here. She would wave her sonic screwdriver at the machine and have an explanation for them in seconds. But she’s not here.

That, Yaz realizes suddenly, might just be a problem they _can_ solve, now that they finally—so it would seem—have a chance to catch their breath.

***

Getting back to the TARDIS requires another international flight. Yaz goes alone, despite Graham’s protests about splitting up—they have to use a fake identity to get aboard the plane, being wanted fugitives at all, and the fewer of them are trying that the better.

The TARDIS is, in the end, right where they left it.

Yaz pushes the door open. Not locked. That’s either a good sign or a very bad one, she supposes.

Yaz steps inside, gaze trailing along the spaceship’s controls. There’s something uncomfortable about seeing the TARDIS without the Doctor, like a photo where the primary subject’s been torn out.

Yaz lays a hand on one of the crystalline columns, and takes a deep breath.

“I know you’re alive,” she says. “At least, I’m pretty sure. The Doctor’s not usually wrong. And if you are, then, hopefully, that means you can understand what this situation is.” She chews her lip. This feels ridiculous. “We need your help,” she says. “The Doctor needs your help.” Her voice trembles on the name. She pauses. There’s no obvious response.

This was stupid. It’s a ship, it can’t—

The room rumbles. Yaz clutches tight to the column as the controls begin to power up.

“Yes!” she shouts, laughing. “Yes, thank you!”

Another moment of shaking, of wild, autopilot flight, and then everything stills. Yaz takes a breath and looks over at the door. She has no chance of reading the information from the console the way the Doctor does; she’ll just have to step outside and hope.

“Alright,” she whispers to herself. “Here goes nothing, right?” She closes the distance between herself and the door, hesitates at the threshold for a moment. Then she pushes the door open and steps out.

Outside, it is morning, and there is snow on the ground, and everything is on fire. That is about all she can process for the first instant, and she’s interrupted from grasping much more by the sound of a familiar voice.

“Yasmin Khan, never have I been more delighted to see anyone in my life.”

The Doctor steps forward, and Yaz tackles her into a hug before she can think twice about it. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she says into the Doctor’s shoulder.

The Doctor steps back. “Can I tell you something? So am I.” She grins. Yaz laughs. She hadn’t realized how much tension she’d been holding in her body; now they’re together again she feels lighter than air.

“Doctor, is that—“ O, standing in the doorway to a nearby building, looking at the TARDIS.

“They found us, O,” the Doctor says, still grinning. “You were right. Everything is looking better in the morning.”

***

They are in the warehouse again, the one with the Silver Lady. Picking up the pieces of their ill-fated adventure. The Doctor’s already taken Ada and Noor back to their times and picked up Ryan and Graham, but after the team told her what happened, she needed to come back here. She needs to know what happened, make sure everything’s as over as it looks.

The sonic whirs. The Doctor frowns at it.

“What is it?” O says.

“It’s…” She runs the scan again. “It looks like someone sabotaged the machine. A while back, if I’m not mistaken. But I can’t understand who would do that, or why.”

“A double agent, maybe,” O says, “someone who’s secretly on our side?”

“Maybe,” the Doctor says. “But who?” She shakes her head. “ _None_ of this makes any sense. It’s all been too easy.”

“Easy?” Graham says. “We were on the run from the law!”

“Yeah, and you two almost got stuck in the 1940s,” Ryan says.

The Doctor attempts a smile. “Yes, you’re right, sorry, yes. Not easy, just…” She shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. Probably just getting paranoid in my old age.”

Still, it bothers her, as she deactivates the Silver Lady machine. As she walks back to the TARDIS with the others. O had said they should look for the spymaster. Somehow she wasn’t sure that they’d found him.

***

The Doctor stands framed in the TARDIS doorway, outside O’s house, looking at him. “Guess this is goodbye,” she says. “For now.”

“Guess so,” he says.

She doesn’t move to leave. “Stay safe.”

“Of course,” he says. “You too.”

She grins. “Now that’s rather a lot to ask, isn’t it?”

O laughs.

Yaz’s voice, from inside the TARDIS: “Doctor, are you coming?”

“Yes!” the Doctor calls over her shoulder. She looks at O one last time. She opens her mouth, and for a moment he thinks she’s going to say something more to him, but instead she spins around and heads inside, towards the others.

The TARDIS fades out of view, and she is gone, and O is alone again.

So, he thinks, that was the Doctor. That was really, truly meeting the Doctor, not the half-glimpse he’d gotten the first time. She was more than he could ever have dreamed of, all radiant energy and quiet smiles.

Don’t they say you should never meet your heroes? The implication, O is pretty sure, is that they’re probably not as amazing as you’ve built them up to be, and _not_ that you’ll probably end up with a weird, hopeless crush on them, but he figures the same principle still applies. O has heard enough of the stories to know that falling for the Doctor only ever ends in heartbreak.


	2. kasaavin

_How are you holding up?_

_good, I think? c_ omes O’s response. _kind of…. reeling, still. it was nice seeing you again though!_

 _Yeah!_ the Doctor types. _We should try harder to meet in less life-threatening situations._

_seems unlikely with you_

_Rude!_

_but true, right?_

_Yes,_ the Doctor writes, _that’s why it’s rude._

_sorry_

_Don’t be. You’re just lucky I’ve got a soft spot for you._

“What’s got you so smiley?”

The Doctor looks up from her phone abruptly. Her three companions are all still there, looking at her.

“Nothing really,” she says to Yaz, slipping the phone into her pocket and maneuvering herself to the other side of the TARDIS console. “Texting with O.”

“That’s that MI6 friend of yours, yeah?” Graham says.

“Yeah,” the Doctor says. “He’s doing okay, you’ll be glad to hear. Anyway, where was I, didn’t mean to get so distracted. Where to next?” She looks at the three of them. She has their full attention, she can tell. This is the part she lives for. “I’m thinking 28th century?”

***

Some amount of time later—it’s always a somewhat meaningless concept on the TARDIS—the Doctor’s phone rings. Actually _rings_ , with a call, which she’d thought was a concept that was more-or-less retired by the 2020s but maybe she’s getting her dates mixed up. She answers it anyway. “Hello?”

“Doctor.” O’s voice. “Sorry, know this is unusual, bit of an emergency here. Those things are back.”

She pulls a lever on the console, readying for the trip without stopping to think. “I’ll be there in a second, just sit tight.” She’d only just dropped Yaz, Ryan, and Graham off in Sheffield. The TARDIS was empty apart from her, and O’s voice on the other end of the line.

“The shield is holding for now,” he says. “But I don’t understand why they’re back. And _here_ of all places.”

The Doctor crosses the TARDIS to hit another control—needs to steer carefully if she’s going to get the timing right. “They’re just at your house?”

“Yeah.”

That _is_ weird. She’d assumed, last time, that they’d been there following her. But if that’s the case, and they’d tracked the TARDIS so easily before, why Australia now and not England?

“Landing now!” she says into the phone, and wrenches the last lever into place. The TARDIS shakes.

It keeps shaking. She steps over to look at one of the readouts and frowns down at it. The TARDIS is upset about the landing position she’s chosen, but she doesn’t have the time to figure out why just now (maybe something do to with those beings?). She murmurs a “Sorry” to the ship as she overrides the alert, and the TARDIS phases into place in O’s living room.

O, sitting at his computer, starts in surprise as the Doctor throws open the TARDIS doors. He scrambles to his feet, but he’s peripheral; the Doctor’s eyes are on the glowing creatures just outside the window. They’re really rather beautiful. Apart from the whole “trying to kill them” thing.

“How long have they been here?” she says.

“Maybe five minutes?”

The Doctor resists the urge to pull out the sonic and try to scan them again. Instead, she turns towards O. “How’s the shield holding?”

At that exact moment, all the lights in the room flicker, and the shield outside with them.

“Am I right that that’s not good?” the Doctor says.

“Very.” O leans over and frantically types out a few commands on the computer. “This building doesn’t have enough power to hold them off indefinitely.”

“Right. Well. Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine.”

The lights flicker again. That part just seems unnecessarily rude.

Okay, think. Power. This place doesn’t have enough power.

Maybe—

The Doctor turns and steps back into the TARDIS.

O looks up. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere yet!” she calls over her shoulder as she starts into a run. She skids to a halt further down one of the TARDIS’ hallways, rummages through a drawer until she finds what she’s looking for. The Doctor weighs the small polyhedral object in her hand a second, then turns and scrambles back the way she came.

Back out into O’s hut.

She tosses the object towards him. He fumbles, catches it. “There. Kieboen power source, functionally infinite, don’t tell the neighbors. Can you wire it in?”

“I can try,” O says.

“That’s the spirit! Now—” The Doctor rests a hand on the TARDIS doorframe, adrenaline coursing through her. “Only one problem with this plan, you’re obviously gonna have to turn the shield off to do that. So, my thought is, I’m gonna go outside—“ She nods towards the window. “—and distract them, and you’re going to fix up the shield. Sound good?”

“Uh—“

“Great.” She shoots him an encouraging grin and whirls around. No time to worry about whether rewiring alien tech into his house is actually within O’s capabilities. She just has to trust him.

It’s a short hop to get the TARDIS outside.

She steps out into the afternoon sunlight. “Hey!” she shouts. “Over here!” She takes out the sonic and raises it above her head with a deafening whirr. Generating sound on as many frequencies as she can.

A couple of the beings turn towards her. That’s great. That was the idea. Also, mildly terrifying.

“What do you want with O?” she says. They don’t respond, just continue slowly towards her. “I still don’t understand what you were doing here. You were working with Barton, but _why_? How did he get in contact with you in the first place?” She wishes they had eyes for her to look into it. As is, she can only stare vaguely in the area where they would be on a human, which just doesn’t have the same effect. “Who are you?”

“We are the Kasaavin,” it says.

“Ooh, a name, that’s nice! Care to answer any of my other questions?”

It, apparently, does not.

“Come on, I bet you’ve got some brilliant plan to take over the world. Don’t you want to share?” She is gaining their attention. More and more peeling away to come see. Enough of them, though, to keep O safe? She isn’t sure.

“We are looking for the traitor,” one of them says.

The Doctor falters for just an instant. That’s new information. “No traitor here,” she says.

In the background, the glowing shield surrounding the hut flickers out. The Doctor freezes, transfixed by the sight of it. There is no way to tell, in this moment, whether that was O’s doing or the Kasaavin’s. She barely dares to breath.

The light of the shield comes back on, brighter than ever. The Doctor exhales. Then she takes a careful step backwards, towards the TARDIS. The Kasaavin who’d been talking is right in front of her, moving in step with her as she backs into the doorway. She crosses the threshold and slams the door shut in its face. It reaches its hand out towards the TARDIS, its fingertips only centimeters away as the ship disappears.

The Doctor stumbles out of the TARDIS into O’s living room, breathing heavily. “Good work, team.” She pauses. “Well, by ‘team’ here I suppose I just mean ‘O.’”

“Are you alright?” O says, standing and stepping towards her.

“I’m fine! Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You were using yourself as bait,” he says.

“Yeah, and it worked pretty great, didn’t it?”

He laughs.

She smiles back. “Not doing a very good job of that ‘meeting up without being in life-threatening danger’ thing, are we?”

“We really aren’t.”

Both of them are quiet a moment.

She heads over to his desk. “Can I see how you did it? Wiring it in?”

“Uh, sure,” he says, gesturing toward where the power source sits, wires sticking out of several of its panels, amongst pens and electronics and notebooks and all manner of things.

She picks it up and examines it; he apparently figured out how to get everything together without too much difficulty. Impressive, given that it’s completely alien, but she knew he was capable. He’d set up that whole shield system himself.

It’s as she goes to set the power source down that she sees it.

Among the notes and wires and pencils. An old-fashioned fob watch.

“You know, I was thinking, we could,” O says. He may as well be lightyears away. “That is, we could make a plan to spend time together, just for the sake of it. If you want to.”

He keeps talking. She is staring at the watch. Slowly, she reaches over and picks it up. It isn’t, she thinks. Tells herself that she’s being ridiculous.

“Doctor?” O says now. “Everything alright?”

She turns the watch over in her hands. Just barely stops herself from dropping it as the Gallifreyan script comes into sight. She looks up at O. “Where did you get this?” Already, she’s pretty sure she knows. He’s a government expert on alien intelligence, probably he picked it up somewhere along the way as an oddity. Probably it’s empty.

Probably.

After all, he can’t be, right? She knows O. She’s known him for _years_.

“It’s a family heirloom, I think. Had it most of my life. Why?”

There’s a chance he is telling the truth, of course. Maybe he’s _descended_ from a Time Lord, wouldn’t that be funny. But…

“Do you mind if I step into the TARDIS and take a look at this?”

He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t understand why you’d want to.”

The Doctor sighs, and makes a split-second decision about how much she’s going to tell him. “Look at this writing, O. This thing’s alien. How is it you’ve had it your whole life and never noticed?”

O steps towards her, peering at the fob watch as she holds it up for him to see. “I didn’t realize it was writing,” he says. “Thought it was just… some sort of weird pattern, I dunno.”

Her stomach sinks. She’s sure he’s smarter than that. So either she’s not as good a judge of character as she’d thought (possible), or there’s a mental block in place, stopping him from reaching the obvious conclusions. And that… Well, no use getting worked up over it just yet. The Doctor steps into the TARDIS without another word.

She locks the door behind her. She doesn’t need anything in here, really, she just doesn’t trust herself to do this where O can see her.

She sets the watch on the console and aims the sonic at it. She checks the results of the scan, then runs it again.

The readings are very clear. This watch has a Time Lord’s consciousness in it.

The Doctor stares at the small, simple object on the console, and doesn’t know what to do next. Should she tell O? Is that cruel? Or is it crueler not to tell him? Does it matter, really, how she treats him now, if he’s only an echo of some other person? It does, of course it does—always be kind—but she has the thought anyways.

Who exactly is he an echo of, anyway? Could be a future version of herself, she supposes (and wouldn’t _that_ just be a proper mess, if she’d been running around with a Chameleon Arch’d version of herself this whole time?). But it could also be any number of other people. Gallifrey stands.

The Doctor thinks of the last time she’d unexpectedly stumbled upon a Time Lord in hiding like this. It could be them, she supposes. She can’t rule out the possibility of it being them.

“Doctor?” O calls from outside. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah, just fine.” She snatches the watch off the console, then walks over and opens the door. “You feel okay with that new shield? I should really be going.”

O stands there, looking at her. “Did you figure out what the deal is with that watch?”

She hesitates. When it doubt, put off the decision until later. “It’s nothing, really. I think you were right, might not even be alien.” She forces herself to hand it back to him, putting on a smile as if she isn’t handing over an entire _person_. He turns it over in his hands, quiet. “Anyway. Text if you have any problems.”

O slips the watch into his pocket like it’s nothing. “Can I text even if I don’t?”

It’s not like she can stop him. She’d kind of like to. She doesn’t know who he is, after all. _He_ doesn’t know who he is.

“Doctor?” O prompts, his voice soft.

She blinks. “Yes,” she says, “yes, right, text me, love to hear from you.” She turns towards the console. “As I said, really should be going.” She prays he doesn’t ask what the rush is, given that she has a time machine and there’s therefore no good reason she needs to leave at any particular time.

He doesn’t call her on it. Though whether that’s because he believes her, or because he doesn’t, she couldn’t say.


	3. oh

A series of texts the Doctor receives, over the course of several days:

_hey, how’s it going?_

_everything ok? you seemed kind of out of it yesterday_

_sorry. none of my business probably._

_the shield is holding really well! still don’t know why they came back though. would love to meet up and try to figure it out?_

The Doctor breaks off mid-sentence and glances towards the phone, vibrating on the console, as this last one comes in.

“Are you gonna answer that?” Ryan says.

“Nah,” she says, eyes not leaving the device. “Not important.”

She doesn’t know what to say to O now, how to interact with him given what she knows.

“You were saying,” Graham prompts, “about the methane waterfalls?”

It takes her a second to realize he’s referring to the conversation they’d been having before she’d gotten a text. She can handle it, though. Pivot back. “Yes! Titan! Brilliant place—“

***

“I am not in a _mood_ ,” the Doctor says.

Yaz meets eyes with Ryan. His face says the same thing she’s thinking: the Doctor is _definitely_ in a mood.

“Yes, you are,” she says. “You’ve been acting weird. Barely talking, staring at that phone like it might attack you.”

Graham chimes in. “Ever since the last time you dropped us back home. What happened, Doc?”

The Doctor stands there, not speaking, looking at them, hand frozen above the TARDIS console. There’s something in her face that Yaz has never seen before, something like fear and something like anger. “It’s nothing any of you need to worry about.”

“Except it is, actually,” Yaz says, “because we’re worried about _you_.”

The Doctor looks down at the console. “It’s complicated,” she says.

“So’s a lot of the stuff you tell us,” Ryan says.

That gets a smile out of her. “This is different.” A long pause, and then a slow intake of breath. “My people,” the Doctor says, “have this technology, called a Chameleon Arch.” Yaz can’t think of another time the Doctor has referred to _her people_. She’d almost started to forget she was an alien at all. “It’s used to turn us human. To hide us.”

“What?” Ryan says. “How does that even work, like…?”

“If I tried to explain the science of it I’ve a feeling we’d be here all day, so I’ll ask that you just accept that it does, yeah? It’s a very advanced piece of equipment, and even still the process… isn’t pretty.” She shakes her head. “Not the point.”

“What exactly is the point?” Graham says. “‘Cause I’m not sure I understand how this relates to anything.”

“This machine, it rewrites a Ti—my species’ DNA. Makes us human. But in order to do that it has to change us at a _fundamental_ level. Change our memories. Makes us _believe_ we’re human.”

“That’s terrifying,” Yaz says.

The Doctor gives a small nod. “So,” she says, “when someone’s used this machine, even I can look right at them and not realize they’re not human. Could give ‘em a scan and everything and it wouldn’t do any good.”

“Doc,” Graham says, “if you’re about to tell me that one of us has been secretly an alien the entire time—“

“What?” the Doctor says. “No, no no no, sorry, didn’t mean to worry you. Not you. It’s O. Our dear friend O is not who he appears to be.”

None of them know what to say to that. O had seemed… nice, when she’d met him. Friendly, certainly. But she hadn’t known him.

“I’m so sorry,” Yaz says.

“Not your fault,” the Doctor says with a laugh.

Yaz isn’t sure she buys it. “Still,” she says, “it seems like you really cared about him. And it turns out he’s been lying this whole time—“

“Not lying,” the Doctor says. “That’s important for you to understand. That’s what makes this whole situation so complicated. He isn’t _lying_.”

Right. Yaz was maybe having a harder time wrapping her head around this situation than she’d care to admit.

“So what are we going to do?” Graham says.

“We,” the Doctor says, “are going to do absolutely nothing. ‘Least not until I’ve figured out who he really is.”

“I’m confused,” Ryan says. “How’re you going to figure out who he is if you’re not going to do anything?”

“Don’t know, still in the planning stage. Anyway, not like he can cause trouble while I’m not looking—time machine and all, I can get there before there’s any issue.”

“Should you maybe start by, I don’t know, talking to him?” Yaz says.

“I’ve talked to him!” the Doctor says. “I’ve talked to him loads, before, that’s the _problem_.” Yaz studies her face as she speaks. There’s some emotion lurking beneath its surface, she thinks, but she isn’t really sure what. “I’ve talked to him, I’ve traveled in time with him, I’ve—“ She breaks off, eyes wide. “Ohhh,” she whispers.

The Doctor steps towards the console.

“Wait, what is it?” Yaz says. “What did you figure out?”

The Doctor tosses her a cellphone. “Text O and tell him we’re stopping by.”

Yaz sighs, but does as instructed.

***

“You said you had dreams about time travel,” the Doctor says as she steps into O’s house.

“…Hello to you too?” O says. He’d gotten a text maybe two minutes ago, and then the TARDIS had materialized in his backyard. And now the Doctor is asking him about an offhand comment he’d made about time travel.

“Yes, sorry, hello,” she says. “This is kind of important.”

“I… What?”

“Just go with it,” Yaz says, appearing behind the Doctor. O can see Graham and Ryan over her shoulder. The whole team. “In my experience it’s best to just let her thoughts run their course.”

“Not sure whether I should be grateful or offended,” the Doctor says. “Regardless—“ She turns back to O. “You, weird dreams. Talk.”

“I never said they were ‘weird’—“

“No, I did. Because if I’m not very wrong about a lot of things, I know the kind of dreams we’re talking about, so you’ll have to take my word for it.”

Yaz and Ryan exchange a questioning glance. O isn’t sure whether it’s more comforting or concerning to realize that they don’t know what’s going on either.

“Can you just explain what this has to do with anything?” he says. The Doctor showing up like this has thrown everything into chaos. No response for days, and then this. Has he missed something?

“You had weird dreams about time travel and then I find this alien artifact you can’t properly explain in your house, and you don’t think there’s a chance those two things are connected?”

Why in the world would he think they _were_ connected? The timeline doesn’t make sense.

Maybe the confusion is clear on his face, because the next thing she says is, “Listen, O, I… I can’t tell you what’s going on exactly. And I’m not being fair to you right now, and I’m sorry, but it’ll all make sense later, I promise.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “I am going to hold you to that promise, though.”

She laughs awkwardly, and takes a seat at his desk. “Right. Well. What can you tell me about these dreams?”

(Ryan, in the background: “Wait, why are the dreams important?”)

O leans again the desk. Where does he even start? How does he know what’s important if he doesn’t know why any of it is?

“They’re…” he says. “I mean, they are kind of weird, I suppose. Vivid. They’re about time travel, some of them, or—or sometimes space travel? The details are… hazy. Other worlds.” It is terrifying, and thrilling, to say all of this aloud, in a way that he hadn’t expected. “In some of them I’m dying. In some of them—” He breaks off.

“Some of them?”

He shrugs. “Everybody gets nightmares sometimes.” He’s been telling himself that for years. It’s never worked.

She looks at him in silence for a moment, as if whatever answers she’s looking for might be hidden on his face. “Tell me about these other worlds.”

O hesitates. Where to start? But even as he has that thought he already knows.

“I guess there’s one place I see a lot. It’s hard to… to keep it in my head. Memories from dreams fade so fast, you know? But this place—there’s this city, domed in grass. A citadel. And the grass—the plants are this brilliant shade of red.”

The Doctor whispers something O can’t hear.

“What’s Gallifrey?” Yaz says quietly, from where she’s standing behind the Doctor.

The Doctor tenses. “Nothing,” she says. “It’s nothing.”

Gallifrey. Gallifrey. O rolls the name around in his head. There’s something…

Wait. “Is that place real?”

The Doctor hesitates. “Yes,” she says, “assuming I’m not wrong about the place that it is, and at this point I really don’t think I am.”

“What is it, then?” he says, and then, “Sometimes when I see it, I see it burned.” The words spill out without him really meaning them to. It’s something about how she’s looking at him.

“There was a war,” she murmurs. He’s not sure whether it’s directed at him or just herself.

“No,” O says, “no, this was more recent.”

She stares at him. “What?”

He blinks. “I… I’m not sure why I just said that.” But now that he’s said it, he knows it’s true. A stray bit of information retained from his dream. “I hate this. It’s like I can’t trust my own _mind_ to make sense, I… Doctor, what exactly is going on here?”

“I really, sincerely wish that I could tell you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea right now. Not until I’ve figured out—“ She stops, eyes widening at something over O’s shoulder.

He turns around, but there’s nothing there.

“What is it?”

“Ryan,” the Doctor says, “I’ve just remembered, there was that thing we needed to show O on the TARDIS. Why don’t you go do that?”

“What—“ Ryan says.

“Right,” Yaz cuts him off, too loud, “the _thing_. From earlier. That you definitely told us about. You guys should go do that.”

O looks at the Doctor, whose gaze is still fixed on the wall—although on what part of it, he really can’t tell.

It is fairly obvious that they’re both lying, but, “Sure. Okay. Let’s go to the TARDIS. Don’t burn down the building while I’m gone, Doctor.”

“Right,” she says distantly, stepping towards the wall. “I’ll try.”

***

How hadn’t she noticed this door before? From its position she’d assume it opened outside, but there’s no light coming from underneath despite the sun shining bright just outside the window.

“Okay,” Yaz says once Ryan, Graham, and O have all left for the TARDIS. “What was that actually about?”

The Doctor pulls out the sonic, runs a scan, and—“Thought so,” she says, “perception filter. Stops it from sticking in your mind.” She looks at Yaz. “Can you see it?”

“See what?”

“The door. Right there.” She points. “Will it help if I—“

She reaches out and lays a hand on the knob, eyes still on Yaz, whose eyes widen.

She tries the knob. Locked, obviously. The Doctor steps back, aims the sonic at it again, and is rewarded with a soft _click_.

Too easy. Everything is far too easy these days.

She takes a deep breath— _here goes nothing_ —and pushes open the door.

On the other side is a TARDIS control room.

Yaz, behind her: “Is that…”

“It’s a TARDIS,” the Doctor says. The whole _building_ is a disguised TARDIS. She’s been standing in a TARDIS this whole time and never realized.

Shades of holographic red light the console in the center of the room, a different look from any version of her own TARDIS. She steps inside, approaching the controls. If she can backtrack where this TARDIS came from, maybe she can work out who—

“Doctor!” O’s voice, and for a second she’s terrified he’s back already. She turns, but Yaz’s gaze is on something on the other side of the room entirely. She turns again.

“Oh, I wish I could see your face right now.” O’s voice, but not quite. A flickering hologram of a man who both is and isn’t O grins wildly at her. “It’s got to be pretty great. Listen, I’ve keyed this message to your biosignature so it should activate the moment you set foot in here. So—”

“That’s O,” Yaz says. “That’s—that’s the alien version of him, like you were saying?”

“Yes,” the Doctor says, “ten points to Yaz, but save the rest of your questions for later because I _need_ to hear what he’s saying.” This is the first real source of information she has, and she has to make the most of it. People can’t just go pretending to be human, on this planet, and expect to get away with it without her finding them.

“Chameleon Arch!” the hologram says. “Clever bit of engineering, don’t you think? Though of course you would, you act like you’re practically human already.” Disdain dripping from every word. “Now, I don’t know exactly what’s gone on, how long it’s been, all of that, but I don’t exactly need to. You’ve found this room. You’ve presumably already met whatever idiot is wandering around in my body.” Who is he? He’s talking like he knows her. That’s got to limit the possibilities. “I’m asking a favor of you, Doctor. Keep an eye on me until this whole situation blows over. Make sure you bring me back once it is. Because if you don’t, when I do come back—and don’t think for a second I won’t—it won’t be pretty for either of us. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, anyway, now is it?” He smiles again. “Not from my best enemy.”

Oh. _Oh._

The hologram flickers off.

“Who was that?” Yaz says.

The Doctor stares at the spot where the hologram had been. “He calls himself the Master.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my hope is to buckle down and get the last chapter finished before the finale airs, so look forward to that saturday-ish!


	4. reunion

The problem with this plan was, of course, that there was in fact nothing back in the Doctor’s TARDIS that O needed to see, and Graham and Ryan could only possibly keep him distracted for so long. Which meant that within moments of the hologram ending, the sound of their return is audible from Yaz and the Doctor stand in the hidden TARDIS control room.

The Doctor grabs Yaz's hand and drags her out into the living room, slamming the door shut and leaning against it as Graham, Ryan, and O come into view.

O, who is the Master. Who is looking at the Doctor with a thousand questions on his face, and is the Master. That’s all she can think, in that moment. It’s him. She found him, without ever meaning to. She can’t decide whether to be relieved or terrified.

“So, what was that about?” O says as he approached. “Why are you making Ryan and Graham lie to me?”

“We’re not lying—“ Ryan attempts.

“Tell me the truth this time,” O says, still looking at the Doctor. “What is going on here?”

“I’m going to have to stick around a while longer,” she says. It’s not answer to his question. “To, ah, monitor. Make sure the Kasaavin don’t come back.”

“Is that necessary? I’ve been—”

“Yes,” she says, in a tone that she hopes does not invite arguing, “it is.” Barely a lie, really.

O does not look convinced. The others are all looking to the Doctor.

“Do you trust me?” she says.

He looks at her in silence a long moment. “I don’t even really know who you are.”

“Sure you do!” She flashes a grin. “I’m _the Doctor_ , remember? You were the one who was telling me you’d heard all the stories.”

“Stories, yes, but…“ O takes a step back from her. “But I mean, those are just _stories_ , right? You’re a real person.”

 _You would know_ , she thinks, but then, of course, he doesn’t. Not this part of him—this part that is so innocent and young and so very, very human. Who still looks at her like she has the answers.

“Aren’t we all just the sum of the stories people tell about us?” she says instead.

He doesn’t respond.

She tries again. “Just the next couple of hours,” she says, “let me poke around a bit. I’ll have it all figured out soon.” She doesn’t know if that’s true, but she needs it to be.

“Come on,” Graham says (and the Doctor half-expects O to snap at him for interrupting, because that’s what the Master would have done—but he doesn’t, of course he doesn’t). “You know the Doc wouldn’t be here if she didn’t think it was important.”

“No, I get that,” O says. His gaze doesn’t leave the Doctor. “I do believe that much. I just also think there’s something she’s not telling me.”

“You’re right.” Yaz now. “There is, and—you know, if you can’t trust her, trust in our trust in her. Yeah? Trust me.”

He sighs. “Sure,” he says. “Yeah, okay.”

“O,” the Doctor says, “do you still have that old watch around here somewhere?” She doesn’t need trust just now, as long he’s not going to be actively causing trouble somehow. She can work with that.

“This is still about that?” She doesn’t respond. “I think it’s on one of the shelves over there, yeah.” He gestures vaguely.

The Doctor steps towards the shelf, eyes scanning its ranks, and spots the watch in an instant. She supposes it’s good that the thing hasn’t caught his attention yet. If he opens it…

But then, what’s the alternative? How long can this possibly last? Could he live a whole life, never knowing? Would that be more merciful? Does he deserve to exist more than the Master does, and who is she to be the judge of that?

She takes the fob watch from the shelf. Moral quandaries later. Right now… something else. Anything else.

“What’s so important about the watch?” O says from behind her.

Okay, you know what? Fine. _Fine_. He wants to do this, they can do this.

She turns to look at him. “I’ll tell you,” she says. “I just have one question for you first.”

He looks at her expectantly.

“What’s your name?”

In the silence that results you could hear a pin drop.

“That is,” the Doctor plows on, “what’s your actual, full name? What do people call you who aren’t in-the-know secret agents? I imagine your family doesn’t call you O.”

“How is that relevant?”

“Just answer the question. It should be an easy one.”

“I—I don’t see—“

“Come on,” she says, closing the distance between them. “Just tell me. What do you have left to hide?’

O’s eyes are wide. “I don’t—“

“You don’t know know your own name?”

“No—I mean—“

“Answer me!”

“Doctor,” Ryan says, “stop it, can’t you see you’re freaking him out?”

The Doctor blinks. O’s face is sheer panic.

This isn’t his fault, she reminds herself.

“Why can’t I remember my name?” O says softly. He’s still looking at her. He doesn’t understand yet that this isn’t something she can save him from.

Her voice is hard as she says, “Because the person who made you did a shoddy job of it.”

“What are you talking about?”

She sighs. “I’m not doing a good job of explaining this.”

***

“—someone I know,” the Doctor says. “I don’t understand how he got to this time and place, or why he’s hiding, really, but he expected me to find him. To find you. He wanted me to protect you.”

“This guy—he’s a friend of yours?” Ryan asks. They’re still all standing around in O’s house (in the Master’s TARDIS), as the Doctor tries to explain the situation.

“Something like that.”

“What does that mean?” Yaz says, eyebrow raised.

“The two of us have a… _complicated_ relationship,” the Doctor says. She is all too aware of O, watching her. He hasn’t spoken much the last couple of minutes.

“Wait wait wait,” Graham says, “if you know this person, how is it that you didn’t recognize him?”

“Regeneration,” she says, because she’s come this far. “Time Lords—my people— _our_ people—can change our faces, our whole bodies. The last time I met him he was a completely different person.”

“So you could be wrong then, right?” O says. “You can’t be sure.”

“No,” she says, thinking of the way he’d spoken in that hologram. “No, I’m sure.”

The lights flicker.

For a moment, none of them move. Then it’s leaping into action, Yaz stepping towards the windows to get a better look, O scrambling to the computer; the Doctor goes and picks up the power source they’d plugged into the shield and begins checking it with the sonic.

“They’re there,” Yaz says. “They’re back.” She doesn’t need to specify who she means.

The Doctor should have thought about this. She should have been prepared for this. Of course they’d come back, and of course they’d be able to overwhelm even this shield, eventually. They need to—

She puts down the power source. “Everyone, stop what you’re doing.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Doc?” Graham says. He’s just been nervously glancing from the window to O to the Doctor and back again.

“Yes,” the Doctor says, “because, remember what we all just learned?” She steps towards the perception-filtered door and pushes it open. “We’re in a TARDIS.”

She steps into the control room and immediately sets about readying for flight, not looking back to check whether the others have followed her. Each step of the process takes her a half-second longer than it should. Everything is in the wrong place; this console wasn’t designed with her in mind. This TARDIS doesn’t know her. But its pilot is currently out of commission, so she’ll have to do.

They don’t need to get anywhere in particular, just _away_. The Vortex works for now. She pulls the last lever and everything shakes. Out in the living room, Ryan exclaims.

“Sorry!” the Doctor shouts.

O is in the doorway. He takes in the TARDIS console with wide eyes, not saying a word.

“Ringing any bells?” she says softly, making an adjustment to their course just so she has an excuse to look back down.

“No.”

What to say to that? What can she possibly say to that, to the enormity of the experience O is going through right now? She’s just told him his entire life is a lie.

“I’m sorry,” is what she finally manages.

“What for?”

“Everything,” she says, and means it.

“It’s not—“

O breaks off as Ryan appears behind him.

“Sorry if I’m interrupting something,” Ryan says, “it’s just, wanted to ask, how sure are we that we’re safe? ‘Cause last time traveling all the way across the world didn’t stop those things from following us, and I kinda don’t want to have a repeat of… that whole experience.”

The Doctor takes a breath. “Right you are, Ryan Sinclair. We’re safe for now, but we need a plan.”

She needs to think. What do they have in their favor? They don’t have her TARDIS, which is never ideal, but they can make it work. But they have this one. What does the Master’s TARDIS have, other than the Master?

It has, just maybe, memory of the Master’s plans. Maybe, just maybe, memory of why the Kasaavin are after him in the first place.

The Doctor looks across the console—she needs a screen readout. Nothing jumps out. That set of buttons, maybe, could be for keying in an information request. She tries it to no effect. She knows the general schema of a TARDIS system well enough to avoid any universe-ending mistakes, probably. She tries another control at semi-random.

“What are you doing?” Ryan says.

She doesn’t look up. “I’m trying to access this TARDIS’ equivalent of memory banks. See where it’s been, hoping maybe that can tell us something about why the Kasaavin are chasing it.”

“That one,” O says, pointing. She jerks her head up. It’s obvious as she meets his gaze that he’s as surprised by his own words as she is.

She presses the button he’d pointed towards and pulls up the readout. “Thanks.”

She starts reading. The news is better than she’d dared hope. This isn’t just information. It’s a solution.

***

Graham looks warily at the Silver Lady machine. “Explain to me how exactly this helps us.”

“This machine was built to help the Kasaavin enter our reality more stably,” the Doctor says. “Barton was going to use it to kill off almost the entire human race, and it didn’t work. Why do you think that is?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” O says. Outside the window of his house that is a TARDIS is an empty field somewhere in continental Europe. (The Chameleon Circuit has stubbornly insisted on keeping this shape. The Doctor doesn’t know whether it’s broken or just sentimental.) “Who was the double agent?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” the Doctor says.

“No,” Graham says, “it kind of isn’t.”

“Agreed,” Yaz says.

“It’s you,” she says to O. “Or, rather, it’s the Master. He must’ve been working _with_ Barton to make this plan, but then something went wrong, he decided he needed to hide, and once he was human, well, he couldn’t take the risk he’d be caught in the attack, so he sabotaged the whole thing. Self-preservation at all costs.”

“So, he saved our life before,” Ryan says. “How does that help us now?”

“Because,” she says, “with the right adjustments, I think I can get the machine to push the Kasaavin away, completely. Create a stable area that they can’t enter, around the entire Earth.” She pulls out the sonic screwdriver. “Like so.”

She aims the sonic at the Silver Lady and sets to work.

Nothing happens.

No matter what she does, how she adjusts the settings, the machine refuses to cooperate. It’s like there’s something in it fighting back, something that’s not supposed to be there, some kind of—well, virus.

Which she already knew.

She can’t make this plan work without disabling the virus the Master implanted. And she can’t fix anything if she can’t make this plan work.

The lights in the room flicker. Outside, something glows.

Okay. “New plan!” Cheery smile, act casual, this will all be _fine_.

“What’s the new plan?” Ryan says.

“Get back to the other TARDIS so I can think of a plan,” she says.

“Is that a good idea?” O says. “Your TARDIS wasn’t shielded. We left it in the Outback with all those Kasaavin. It might not be accessible.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” she says.

***

It was not fine, as it turned out.

They couldn’t get back to her TARDIS. They teleported near it, but O was right. The Kasaavin were still there, and there was no way to get close. She picked another random location and moved them away again.

So now they’re trapped, with no way out that she can see just yet. In trying to save O—to save the Master—to save _her friend_ , the Doctor may have led her other friends into the same fate as him. What good is a TARDIS if you can never leave it?

O sits down at the desk across from her now. “I’ve had an idea,” he says.

Her three companions are on the other side of the room. She’s been trying very hard not to listen to their anxious whispering. “I’m all ears,” she says.

“You haven’t been able to unscramble the virus.”

“No.” The word is like ice in her mouth. She could do it, she thinks, but it would take years. (That won’t stop her from trying, but she hasn’t managed it yet.)

“What if we had someone with us who knew how it worked, knew all the encryption keys,” O says.

“We don’t, so it’s probably no help speculating.”

“What if we had the person who designed it.”

She looks at him. “No,” she says. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” There’s an intensity to his tone that’s unfamiliar. “It’s just remembering some things I forgot, isn’t it?”

“Because—“ She flounders. “Because it’s _not_. You’re not the same person, not really. Bits of him are stuck in your subconscious like psychological dryer lint, but _he_ isn’t physically inhabiting your body right now. He’s in here.” She pulls out the fob watch and holds it up for him to see, as if that will convince him.

“Come on, Doctor,” he says. “Let someone else be the hero for once.”

She can’t let him do this.

Ryan, Graham, and Yaz, are still across the room, and her gaze drifts towards them now. They’re just talking. Not panicked in the least. Waiting on the Doctor to save the day.

She has to let him do this.

“Are you sure?” she says.

Now he hesitates.

“Some of the dreams I’ve had…” He trails off. “This man who you say is me. Is he a good person?”

“He’s amazing,” she says. “He’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She’d known that when she said it. “It’s not as simple as that,” she insists. “No one is all good or all bad. I can’t be the judge of that, I’m sorry.”

“One other question.”

“What is it?”

A heartbeat’s hesitation. “Do you love him?”

She looks at him, stunned.

“It’s complicated,” she says. He deserves the truth, though, even if it’s one she’s never dared to admit aloud. When she speaks again, it’s barely a whisper. “But yes.”

He nods. “Give me the fob watch.”

“No,” she says, getting to her feet and holding the watch away as if that will prevent this. “No, this can’t be about me, O. I don’t want that on my conscience.”

He doesn’t say anything. He just looks at her, soft and quiet and desperate.

For the first time, she really believes that he’s the Master.

“Are you _sure_?” she says. She wants him to say no. Wants it more than anything in the world, in that moment.

He just nods again.

The Doctor reaches out and offers him the watch in an outstretched palm. He clasps his hand over hers, meeting her gaze, curls his fingers around its edge. Then he takes it, his hand sliding out of her grasp as easily as water.

“Do you want me to be alone?” She wants him to say yes.

“No,” he says. “Stay.”

So she stays.

O stares down at the fob watch, finger hovering over the latch. He sits like that for long enough that she thinks maybe he’ll change his mind.

He takes one last deep breath, and opens it.

Golden light pours out. There are surprised voices across the room, but she isn’t paying attention to them just now. The strands of gold twisting through the air in front of her like starlight are the Master’s very soul, and she is standing close enough that she could reach out and touch them if she wanted to. The intimacy of it is almost enough to suffocate her.

O gasps, and shudders, and Doctor puts a hand on his arm on instinct in some imitation of a comforting gesture. He looks down at it in surprise, and pulls away.

He looks at her and gives that manic grin and says, “Doctor.” (It’s only her name, but there’s something so different about the way he says that she knows right away that it’s him.)

The Doctor crosses her arms. “That was cruel.”

He stands and gives an exaggerated bow. “Thank you. I do have a reputation to uphold.”

She fights to keep her face impassive. He is so different, and yet, and yet.

“Explain,” she says.

“Explain what?”

The humans have approached them now, are watching in silence. “Explain exactly what it is that you’re—why you—how—“ This is not going well. “Okay, you know what? Later. We can do that later. For now, you are going to fix this machine, and I am going to use it to save all of us, and _then_ you and me are going to have a good long talk.”

“Do tell,” he says, stepping towards her. He’s still holding the open fob watch. “Why exactly would I do that?”

“Because you owe me now,” she says, aiming for fiery but mostly landing on hurt. “I made sure you made it out of that watch, and you _owe me_.”

“Alright,” he says.

“What?”

“I said, alright. You’ve convinced me. I do you this and then we’re _even_?” She can’t tell whether or not he’s mocking her.

“Yeah,” she says. “Then we’re even.” And she finds herself laughing, because of course, it _is_ absurd, to think that everything that’s happened between them can be tallied up so easily.

***

He fixes the machine. She saves all of them.

They retreat to his TARDIS control room, just the two of them, and they talk. She was right about the situation that had led him to use the Arch. Of course she was. It’s hard to care, in the end.

“Why, though?” she says, leaning in over the console. “Why do all of this, why the whole plan, what were you ever supposed to get out of it?”

“How else was I suppose to get your attention?”

She scoffs.

He eyes her silently a moment. “When did you last go home?”

**Author's Note:**

> you can follow me on tumblr & twitter @confusedbluesky


End file.
